Reuters Business Traveller

Chicago – Overview

Flanked by Lake Michigan, Chicago has come a long way since its humble beginning as a group of riverside cabins circa 1835. Chicago is now known as the “city that works”, and attracts professionals and business travellers from across the world. They come to work with and visit financial institutions like the Chicago Stock Exchange; transportation businesses like Boeing and United Airlines; telecommunication firms like Motorola and food giants McDonald’s, Kraft and Sara Lee.

For architect Frank Gehry, Chicago is America’s most visually exciting metropolis. Head-turning buildings from the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan and Daniel Burnham are juxtaposed with glass-and-steel luxury hotels (the astonishing Trump International Hotel and Tower, for example) and acres of tranquil green spaces. Stand on a bridge over the Chicago River with the Wrigley Building on one side and the business district skyscrapers on the other watching shoppers surge down the “Magnificent Mile” retail strip and you will see what he means.

Chicago has a healthy artistic fibre for a city that happily equates baseball with culture — the two beloved teams here are the Cubs and the White Sox. The theatre scene is thriving, with Broadway in Chicago offering spectacular productions throughout the season. Music-wise, rich, gritty blues and the jazz movement are well covered: low-key lounges show mainstream, traditional, be-bop jazz and blues every night of the week. Fill up beforehand in one of the city’s many gastropubs, steakhouses or pizza joints — Chicago is all about deep-dish pizza. Leave room for piled-high hot dogs and Italian beef sandwiches.

Travellers in the winter months beware: Chicago gets very chilly: bundle up warm. The summer more than makes up for it, and in June-July the “Windy City” becomes one of the most pleasant places to be in the U.S. When the sun shines, rollerbladers and joggers colonise the lakeshore.

Don’t leave Chicago without visiting the skydeck of North America’s tallest building, the 110-storey Sears Tower.

-Money: US Dollars (US$)

Hotels do not, as a rule, exchange currency and only a few major banks offer the service so it is advisable to arrive with dollars, or exchange foreign currency at the airport upon arrival. Try not to land yourself with $100 notes because taxi drivers won’t change them. Credit cards are widely used.